Simply because its tricky to set up for your average user.
Who said anything about the "average user"? You're implying that once the user progresses beyond "average" then they'll want to stop using the desktop. This is a silly idea.
...but he does not believe those eyeballs are looking for security problems in a structured way.
As a developer of proprietary software (hey, no flames, it's my job), I can assure you that there is very little structured security analysis of closed source software. Some closed software may be rigorously audited because of its nature, but the same holds true in Open Source (OpenBSD). You're not going to see any security audits for non-security software. You might see a few half-hearted attempts at it (like Microsoft's month long fix-fest), and very localized panic attacks when vulnerabilities are made public, but for the most part it's an ignored area of development.
"Security through obscurity" is still king, because the people making software security decisions in commercial firms generally don't know any other way. They also do not see the financial value in secure software, because it's not something that the customer will pay extra for in non-security related software. Then there's the problem of ignorant coders.
We have all gone through the phase where we think we know about security and encryption. In a proprietary environment such a security ignoramus can reach chief software architect level. In my own work I've seen three "clever" encryption schemes by senior developers that were complete jokes. One scheme even produced *sequential* keys it was so bad. In the Open Source community such security hubris is slapped down quickly.
In short, the author is wrong. Open Source is not inherently more secure than proprietary software, but the open development model encourages a higher level of security analysis.
I think your exceptions prove the rule. VMWare is partially in kernel land, IIRC. Oracle uses a raw file system and thus direct hardware access. And I suspect your XFree86 problems are due to DRI. These are all exceptions because they're userland applications intruding upon the domain of the kernel.
I should have worded my post better. But no matter if these are exceptions to the rule or not. This kind of stuff is RARE under Unix systems.
Dude! Cannabis is like a valid industrial substance. People think it's just us, um, for smoking, but it has lots of uses, man. Like my fishnet undies are made out of it, man. And my laptop! Yeah my laptop! Just stick a joint in the side and it's like good for three hours. Hey, just like me! That's why you should legalize it, not so I could smoke it, but like it would run my laptop.
interrupt the installer process and the whole thing rolls back
Why stop there? Why not go for a higher level of granularity? Imagine using this to UNINSTALL applications? Just cancel the transaction and *poof* the app is uninstalled as if it had never been there...:-)
Hardly! He was a devout cultist who followed every crackpot claptrap of the German occult scene. He used astrology and numerology to plan military actions for pete's sake! He may have been nominally Catholic, but he certainly was not devout.
I turn my workstation off on weekends. Back when I was running KDE/FreeBSD, that was the end of it. But now that I am required to run WinXP, I find that I have to reboot once in a two week period on average. That's a seven percent change per day of having to reboot!. This isn't a system chock full of spyware and virii, but a system maintained by a trained crew of expert administrators. A professional enterprise grade OS with 95% marketshare should NOT be this unstable.
Speaking of X, I haven't had X crash on my home system since I stopped using the proprietary nVidia driver about six months ago (so actually it wasn't X but the driver instead). While I had it at work, X never crashed on me. I have had X lock up and steal the keyboard so I couldn't recover, but that's a very rare event.
While your scenario is possible, I doubt it is likely. Quality commercial applications like Autocad are designed to recover gracefully in situations like these. I could see your scenario happening in a zero-tested shareware app from download.com, but not with somethng like Autocad. Requiring a reboot after an application crashes is the fault of the OS. This kind of behavior does not happen under Linux, Unix or Mac.
I'd be fine with a near laisez faire system- as long as you gave every citizen a mighty big stick to whack the corporation with when they did wrong.
You have one already. It's called the market place. If the company pisses off the public it loses a crapload of money. Even a monopoly. It's not a perfect system (nothing is) because not everyone is going to have your particular sense of right and wrong, but it does work. When e.coli was found in some Odwalla juice, it hit Odwalla very bad. It took them a long time to get back to where they were before the incident.
For 51% share taken from all current stockholders.
Under a true laissez-faire system, there would be no corporate liability shield for the stockholders. That's purely a govenrment granted privilege. Under laissez-faire the stockholders are responsible for the actions of their company. When Exxon dumped crude oil on the Alaskan coast, one ship pilot got fired. BFD. Under a laissez faire system every stockholder would have been liable for damages and cleanup costs. Collectively it might not amount to much for each stockholder (like your grandma with one share in your pension fund), but collectively those same stockholders are going to do a heck of a lot more to keep the company on a moral even keel, simply because they're responsible for it. It's one thing to demand stock growth at any cost when you're not accountable, but it's another when you ARE accountable.
It doesn't make it right if they unfairly take even a small amount of undue profit
Unfairly? Small amount? Undue profit? It sounds like we're getting into a very subjective area here. I'm sorry but I like my law a bit more objective than that. It sounds to me like you're buying [sic] into the medieval notion of a just price. While you do have some economic ground to stand on while arguing against cartels and collusion, you have none if you're arguing about unjust pricing.
Infineon may have charged Kingston too much. I don't know because that's between Infineon and Kingston. All I know is that I was happy with my price from Kingston. Kingston charged what the market would bear, and I was very happy to bear it.
There are always barriers to entry. Even the lemonade stand business has barriers to entry. What I meant to say in my imprecise text was that there would be no artificial obstacles created by government or the cartel. They couldn't stop you from competing. The more they try to screw the market with a cartel they more they create their own competition.
I myself as a single solitary guy would have a major obstacle in front of me if I wanted to get into that business, but there are planted of firms large enough to to do it. When they discover that the cartel is overpricing their goods, they could come in and knock the foundation out from under the cartel.
Even ignoring patents (which, by the way, most libertarians do not believein doing away with)
Patents are pure-government coercion, and any libertarian worth his salt will oppose them.
The free market fails in this respect, as it does in many.
And so does government antitrust. This isn't a story of the DOJ stopping price-fixing before it happened, but one of the DOJ coming in at the tail end of a problem. The purpose of antitrust isn't to prevent monopolies, cartels and trusts, but to punish selected transgressors after the fact.
Free Beer! That's beer that's free as pretzels and open as speech. I'm talking about the Free and Open Source QBrew Homebrew Recipe Calculator.
[Hey, it's shameless self-promotion, but beer related stories don't appear on Slashdot that often]
You don't even need to know how to brew, because it comes with a brewing primer. To be honest, while the software is free as in pretzels, brewing ingredients might set you back twenty bucks for a two case batch, but that twenty buck is worth it. Now go and make some "Beer Found to be as Healthy as Wine".
[Now I'm starting to feel ashamed about this shameless self-promotion, better wrap up quick]
It's even free for Windows and Mac (but is much cooler under a Free and Open system like Linux or BSD). A new release is due within the month, but why wait? Build now and avoid the rush...
Beer bellies are caused by overindulgence in beer. It's drinking that six back of Budmilloorsen Lite instead of one bottle of Guinness of Sierra Nevada that does it.
Re:hope they finally got rid of some annoyances ..
on
GNOME 2.8 Released
·
· Score: 1
Because the GUI is simpler...
Huh? The GUI is actually more complex with spatial. When you click on a folder icon you end up creating a new window. With non-spatial you're reusing the existing window. That means fewer resources. It also means you don't have to look up where the user last left that window so you can position it spatially.
Constructing and rendering a GUI is surprisingly intensive
Precisely. Which is why spatial should be more intensive than non-spatial, simply because it's constructing more windows. Unless it's doing something really goofy in the non-spatial case then spatial should be slower. Maybe not slow enough to affect the user, but still slower than the simpler case of non-spatial.
Getting all the new cool stuff like compositioning working will be a major focus of GNOME 2.10
Why is it the major focus? I can see it being a minor focus, but way make it major? It's not like you have to redo every application, just some stuff in GTK+, write a few themes to utilize it, and you're done!
Anyone who calls themself a libertarian, opposes antitrust laws and has a sympathetic view of the south in the civil war would do well to read some of the founders of the CSA's opinions on monied corporations.
Now go look at what the CSA was complaining about. You yourself say they were seeking tariffs. The problem with the monied corporations at that time was that they were receiving *government* privilege!
Would someone please tell me why we can patent online shopping carts and file formats? How about business processes in general?
Because there are *governmnet* laws allowing this. Did you think copyrights and patents sprung magically out of Lady Liberty's forehead?
Please don't complain about freedom while pointing at government coercion.
Who did the price fixing harm? A few OEM's. What would the OEM's options have been under a free society? Sue Infineon for fraudulant negotiation. Would Infineon and friends have been able to maintain a cartel without the benefit of government copyright and patent laws? No, because there would be no barrier to entry.
Sorry, but I don't see the problem. The economy isn't a zero-sum game. Even if some RAM manufacturers managed to unfairly fatten their pockets, so what? A free market will not let any cartel keep their prices artificially high for any length of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Simply because its tricky to set up for your average user.
Who said anything about the "average user"? You're implying that once the user progresses beyond "average" then they'll want to stop using the desktop. This is a silly idea.
...but he does not believe those eyeballs are looking for security problems in a structured way.
As a developer of proprietary software (hey, no flames, it's my job), I can assure you that there is very little structured security analysis of closed source software. Some closed software may be rigorously audited because of its nature, but the same holds true in Open Source (OpenBSD). You're not going to see any security audits for non-security software. You might see a few half-hearted attempts at it (like Microsoft's month long fix-fest), and very localized panic attacks when vulnerabilities are made public, but for the most part it's an ignored area of development.
"Security through obscurity" is still king, because the people making software security decisions in commercial firms generally don't know any other way. They also do not see the financial value in secure software, because it's not something that the customer will pay extra for in non-security related software. Then there's the problem of ignorant coders.
We have all gone through the phase where we think we know about security and encryption. In a proprietary environment such a security ignoramus can reach chief software architect level. In my own work I've seen three "clever" encryption schemes by senior developers that were complete jokes. One scheme even produced *sequential* keys it was so bad. In the Open Source community such security hubris is slapped down quickly.
In short, the author is wrong. Open Source is not inherently more secure than proprietary software, but the open development model encourages a higher level of security analysis.
OTOH, Himmler was definitely very interested in all manner of dodgy pseudosciences
Hmmm, I may have confused the two. I do read a lot of "trashy pseudohistorical paperbacks" though...
I think your exceptions prove the rule. VMWare is partially in kernel land, IIRC. Oracle uses a raw file system and thus direct hardware access. And I suspect your XFree86 problems are due to DRI. These are all exceptions because they're userland applications intruding upon the domain of the kernel.
I should have worded my post better. But no matter if these are exceptions to the rule or not. This kind of stuff is RARE under Unix systems.
Then we can sneak Beano® into the competition's coffee! Yeah!
Dude! Cannabis is like a valid industrial substance. People think it's just us, um, for smoking, but it has lots of uses, man. Like my fishnet undies are made out of it, man. And my laptop! Yeah my laptop! Just stick a joint in the side and it's like good for three hours. Hey, just like me! That's why you should legalize it, not so I could smoke it, but like it would run my laptop.
interrupt the installer process and the whole thing rolls back
:-)
Why stop there? Why not go for a higher level of granularity? Imagine using this to UNINSTALL applications? Just cancel the transaction and *poof* the app is uninstalled as if it had never been there...
Hitler was most definitely a devout catholic
Hardly! He was a devout cultist who followed every crackpot claptrap of the German occult scene. He used astrology and numerology to plan military actions for pete's sake! He may have been nominally Catholic, but he certainly was not devout.
I turn my workstation off on weekends. Back when I was running KDE/FreeBSD, that was the end of it. But now that I am required to run WinXP, I find that I have to reboot once in a two week period on average. That's a seven percent change per day of having to reboot!. This isn't a system chock full of spyware and virii, but a system maintained by a trained crew of expert administrators. A professional enterprise grade OS with 95% marketshare should NOT be this unstable.
Speaking of X, I haven't had X crash on my home system since I stopped using the proprietary nVidia driver about six months ago (so actually it wasn't X but the driver instead). While I had it at work, X never crashed on me. I have had X lock up and steal the keyboard so I couldn't recover, but that's a very rare event.
While your scenario is possible, I doubt it is likely. Quality commercial applications like Autocad are designed to recover gracefully in situations like these. I could see your scenario happening in a zero-tested shareware app from download.com, but not with somethng like Autocad. Requiring a reboot after an application crashes is the fault of the OS. This kind of behavior does not happen under Linux, Unix or Mac.
What was the thing you got stuck on at first?
The first thing I got stuck on was not reading the manual. So I guess I should write this up and put it in the manual, huh?
Yep. Carnegie will be remembered for the Diplodocus, and Gates for Clippy.
There's always NetBeer, you can drink it out of any container, even your toaster...
Marmite: vegemite on a hangover...
I'd be fine with a near laisez faire system- as long as you gave every citizen a mighty big stick to whack the corporation with when they did wrong.
You have one already. It's called the market place. If the company pisses off the public it loses a crapload of money. Even a monopoly. It's not a perfect system (nothing is) because not everyone is going to have your particular sense of right and wrong, but it does work. When e.coli was found in some Odwalla juice, it hit Odwalla very bad. It took them a long time to get back to where they were before the incident.
For 51% share taken from all current stockholders.
Under a true laissez-faire system, there would be no corporate liability shield for the stockholders. That's purely a govenrment granted privilege. Under laissez-faire the stockholders are responsible for the actions of their company. When Exxon dumped crude oil on the Alaskan coast, one ship pilot got fired. BFD. Under a laissez faire system every stockholder would have been liable for damages and cleanup costs. Collectively it might not amount to much for each stockholder (like your grandma with one share in your pension fund), but collectively those same stockholders are going to do a heck of a lot more to keep the company on a moral even keel, simply because they're responsible for it. It's one thing to demand stock growth at any cost when you're not accountable, but it's another when you ARE accountable.
It doesn't make it right if they unfairly take even a small amount of undue profit
Unfairly? Small amount? Undue profit? It sounds like we're getting into a very subjective area here. I'm sorry but I like my law a bit more objective than that. It sounds to me like you're buying [sic] into the medieval notion of a just price. While you do have some economic ground to stand on while arguing against cartels and collusion, you have none if you're arguing about unjust pricing.
Infineon may have charged Kingston too much. I don't know because that's between Infineon and Kingston. All I know is that I was happy with my price from Kingston. Kingston charged what the market would bear, and I was very happy to bear it.
No barriers to entry?
There are always barriers to entry. Even the lemonade stand business has barriers to entry. What I meant to say in my imprecise text was that there would be no artificial obstacles created by government or the cartel. They couldn't stop you from competing. The more they try to screw the market with a cartel they more they create their own competition.
I myself as a single solitary guy would have a major obstacle in front of me if I wanted to get into that business, but there are planted of firms large enough to to do it. When they discover that the cartel is overpricing their goods, they could come in and knock the foundation out from under the cartel.
Even ignoring patents (which, by the way, most libertarians do not believein doing away with)
Patents are pure-government coercion, and any libertarian worth his salt will oppose them.
The free market fails in this respect, as it does in many.
And so does government antitrust. This isn't a story of the DOJ stopping price-fixing before it happened, but one of the DOJ coming in at the tail end of a problem. The purpose of antitrust isn't to prevent monopolies, cartels and trusts, but to punish selected transgressors after the fact.
Free Beer! That's beer that's free as pretzels and open as speech. I'm talking about the Free and Open Source QBrew Homebrew Recipe Calculator.
[Hey, it's shameless self-promotion, but beer related stories don't appear on Slashdot that often]
You don't even need to know how to brew, because it comes with a brewing primer. To be honest, while the software is free as in pretzels, brewing ingredients might set you back twenty bucks for a two case batch, but that twenty buck is worth it. Now go and make some "Beer Found to be as Healthy as Wine".
[Now I'm starting to feel ashamed about this shameless self-promotion, better wrap up quick]
It's even free for Windows and Mac (but is much cooler under a Free and Open system like Linux or BSD). A new release is due within the month, but why wait? Build now and avoid the rush...
Beer bellies are caused by overindulgence in beer. It's drinking that six back of Budmilloorsen Lite instead of one bottle of Guinness of Sierra Nevada that does it.
Because the GUI is simpler...
Huh? The GUI is actually more complex with spatial. When you click on a folder icon you end up creating a new window. With non-spatial you're reusing the existing window. That means fewer resources. It also means you don't have to look up where the user last left that window so you can position it spatially.
Constructing and rendering a GUI is surprisingly intensive
Precisely. Which is why spatial should be more intensive than non-spatial, simply because it's constructing more windows. Unless it's doing something really goofy in the non-spatial case then spatial should be slower. Maybe not slow enough to affect the user, but still slower than the simpler case of non-spatial.
Getting all the new cool stuff like compositioning working will be a major focus of GNOME 2.10
Why is it the major focus? I can see it being a minor focus, but way make it major? It's not like you have to redo every application, just some stuff in GTK+, write a few themes to utilize it, and you're done!
Firefox users remember; center-click is yr friend! ;)
After all, it's not like any other browser can do this...
And he's also to blame for the death of Binky my goldfish...
Anyone who calls themself a libertarian, opposes antitrust laws and has a sympathetic view of the south in the civil war would do well to read some of the founders of the CSA's opinions on monied corporations.
Now go look at what the CSA was complaining about. You yourself say they were seeking tariffs. The problem with the monied corporations at that time was that they were receiving *government* privilege!
Would someone please tell me why we can patent online shopping carts and file formats? How about business processes in general?
Because there are *governmnet* laws allowing this. Did you think copyrights and patents sprung magically out of Lady Liberty's forehead?
Please don't complain about freedom while pointing at government coercion.
Who did the price fixing harm? A few OEM's. What would the OEM's options have been under a free society? Sue Infineon for fraudulant negotiation. Would Infineon and friends have been able to maintain a cartel without the benefit of government copyright and patent laws? No, because there would be no barrier to entry.
Sorry, but I don't see the problem. The economy isn't a zero-sum game. Even if some RAM manufacturers managed to unfairly fatten their pockets, so what? A free market will not let any cartel keep their prices artificially high for any length of time.